


"Beware; For I Am Fearless, And Therefore Powerful."

by FeelTheSteelMillsRust



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Autobots - Freeform, Decepticons - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Everything Turns Out Okay (Kind Of), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Self-Indulgent, Trauma, Very Odd Style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 05:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23373034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeelTheSteelMillsRust/pseuds/FeelTheSteelMillsRust
Summary: In which Starscream acquires nearly illimitable power, and finds that it cannot mend all wrongs.
Relationships: Starscream & Original Cybertronian Character(s), Starscream (Transformers) & Original Character(s), Starscream (Transformers) & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	"Beware; For I Am Fearless, And Therefore Powerful."

_Is this power?_ Starscream idly wondered, standing in the exact center of a scattered circle of fallen Decepticons and Autobots. One could almost draw a perfect line down the division between the two sides… He frowned. Megatron had thought him working for the Autobots, and had tried once again to terminate him. He had failed. Nothing could terminate him now; he felt quite certain of that. Optimus Prime had thought him sent by Megatron, which was equally wrong. Nothing, no one, could order him around now. He was absolutely determined of that.

He felt vaguely dazed, and when he moved his hand it seemed a dreamlike thing. He stared, amazed, as he opened and closed his fist. How could any robot not know how - miraculous, for lack of a better word - this simple movement was? He marveled at the action. Someone in the field of agonized bodies groaned. He frowned. When he had landed here, there had been...shouting, and noise. He thought, distantly, that perhaps they had tried to shoot at him. They were foolish. It would never have worked. Nothing could harm him now. He was sure of that. Had they been fighting when he landed? He tried to remember. Yes, there had been...that noise was what drew him here. It irritated him. He had only intended to ask them to stop, but - they seemed to grow angrier, and louder, and more aggressive upon his arrival. He had been unable to think, with all that racket. He had let the nearly boundless energy he could still feel undulating within his circuits and wires spill over, expending it in great blasts of light that he remembered wondering at the peculiar color of (he couldn't quite figure out exactly _what_ color it was) until there was silence and all was still.

He heard a sound from the mouth of the wreck of the Autobots' former cruiser, heard someone - several someones, he noted absently - gasp with shock, but he didn't look over. He held his hand up before his face, enraptured by the fluid movement. How had such a thing been designed? It was...wondrous. He became aware of someone approaching him cautiously. Frowning slightly, he spoke for the first time in a while, revelling in the simple possibility of his own voice. "Go away."

"Starscream…"

He recognized that voice. But why did it, normally so joyful, instead resonate with hurt and sadness? Did she not know that it was - such a glorious thing to be - alive? As long as any function remained to him, he solemnly and silently swore, _he_ would not forget that truth.

She spoke again, and this time he turned to meet her gaze. "Starscream, are you okay?" He could have laughed. Couldn't she see? Didn't she know? Nothing could hurt him now. The past was irrelevant. He was safe now. He frowned, catching that last thought. Safe? From what? He spoke regardless, intending to reassure his dear foolish friend. "Of course. It is such a nice thing. Fill your voice with joy - it is incredible, to be - to feel - to live." That only seemed to worry her further, as her face grew more concerned still, and even - fearful? He quickly spoke again, without thinking. "You need not fear. It is - safe - now. He can't-" Starscream cut himself off, trying desperately to hold onto this dreamlike peace, but found himself unwillingly plunged into darker thoughts. Millennia spent at the right hand of a leader who took out his rage on his underlings when his enemies rebuffed him...fear, hatred, admiration, terror hidden even from himself with reverence and cunning.

"Starscream." Yes, that was his name, wasn't it? Names, such a strange and - wonderful thing…

But though he tried, he found himself gripped firmly in the jaws of confusion and despair. He had been...he was so angry, so eternally furious, an unending well of rage and humiliated torment. He didn't realize he was speaking out loud at first, not recognizing the suddenly rusty sound of his voice. "At first...I thought it was my fault, for failing. It was my fault. For failing. I repaired myself and tried to do better. And I did, for a time. But I inevitably…

"Inevitably, I failed again. And so came my punishment. I accepted it, not noticing that I was the only one receiving such harshness.

"Sometimes it wasn't my fault that I failed. But I had failed nonetheless, and as I was in command of the failed mission, the blame was on me. I accepted it, not noticing that others shifted the blame to those who truly failed, and did so successfully.

"Skyfire-" He broke off momentarily, confusion swimming behind his eyes as he started to realize where he was.

"Skyfire first made me aware of my - unfair treatment. I thought it must be that the great Megatron fears me! He must fear me, and that is why he tries so hard to demoralize me, to break me. But it was not so… it is not so.

"I came here - I came here, yes, and he denounced me! He never thought anything more of me than of Laserbeak! Less even, he said the bird at least succeeds. He - he was merely amused by my agony, my desperation to please him - !"

Starscream felt faint. He'd never given voice nor even thought to these feelings before. He continued, in a voice breaking with heavy emotion. " _Amused!_ I guess I knew he took some pleasure in inflicting harm, but - he _delighted_ in my agony! In my suffering! The only reason he never terminated me was - I was like a _pet_! A mildly entertaining dog to be _kicked_ and _shouted_ at and - and -"

The depthless energy within him seemed to react to his roiling emotions, growing playfully thunderous. He couldn't speak any further. He tried, but the words seemed not to want to come out.

The grey-blue Autobot in front of him, who had listened to all his flood of words with nothing but understanding on her face, quietly spoke. "You cannot live with such hatred, Starscream - you cannot take it out on others. It will consume you, it will reform you into - him. Hurting others won't make you feel better, it will only make you more anguished. It is no way to heal - believe me."

He did believe her. He didn't know how she knew all of this, and, dazed as he was, he didn't think to ask. But even then, something objected within him. He tried once again to speak, and found he could, albeit with difficulty and only in a scratchy, raw voice that he barely heard as his own. "But he - he caused me such - _horror_ , such _agony_...he caused me untold and untellable suffering - he has destroyed every possibility of - me…"

She smiled sadly, her face one of grief and love, but not pity. Never pity, he remarked absently, that was what had drawn him to her...their friendship was built in solid respect. "Vengeance will only make you feel worse. No death could come close to the proper atonement...and perhaps there is no proper atonement. You owe him nothing. Not your respect, not your words, not your attention, not even your thoughts. You owe him nothing."

Starscream considered this. He was still considering it silently when he belatedly remembered something. He opened his chest and removed the strange crystal he had taken from that old ruined temple altar. The humans had warned him the thing was sacred, and that a curse would befall whoever took it - what use, really, he had thought at the time, in entrusting such power to humans who would never use it, and for such a backwards reason? He admitted now that perhaps that specific crystal was - not cursed of course, but - well, maybe too powerful for any one being. He handed the tiny thing, still glowing that odd unidentifiable color, to his friend, who took it, bewildered.

"Are you...alright now?" Starscream nodded and immediately collapsed. He managed to sit up, with the help of a slightly-exasperated but no less concerned C.D., and for the first time saw the destruction he had caused. He felt drained and exhausted without that source of limitless energy, and as he looked out at the sea of unconscious and barely-conscious robots - which _he_ had put there, in that state - all he felt was tired. C.D. cast him a sympathetic look. "Look, I gotta go..." - here they gestured vaguely at the scene - "...fix that. I'll be back, but I have to make sure Ratchet and Wheeljack are functional first, at the very least…"

He waved them off, though they seemed reluctant to leave him. "I'm fine," he managed, "just tired. I just need to rest…"

He didn't know how long a time passed, but it was long enough for most of the fallen Transformers to regain consciousness, and for several of the less-damaged Autobots to start helping Ratchet, Wheeljack, and C.D. in minor repairs and moving the more seriously injured. Starscream found he didn't like to think about those. He turned to watch the Decepticons instead, who were slowly coming to, still sprawled out or crumpled in heaps on the rocky ground. He stood up, swaying slightly, and began to walk among them.

"Thundercracker. Skywarp. You two weren't terrible."

He wasn't sure why he was acting as if he would never see them again.

"Rumble. You were fairly competent."

And yet he felt as though he wouldn't.

"Blitzwing, Astrotrain. …I have no words for you."

It wasn't as though he was planning on dying anytime soon.

"Soundwave... you're as loyal to Megatron as they come, yet you rarely reported my treasonous intentions."

So why…

He stopped. "Megatron." Of course. Things couldn't exactly go back to status quo after this. He would be a Decepticon no longer.

Unless…

The mighty Megatron lay utterly defeated at his feet, entirely helpless. He could dispose of Megatron once and for all, and finally lead the Decepticons to victory.

So why was he hesitating? Why, then, had this not occurred to him sooner?

Was that what he really wanted?

Megatron stared up at him, breathing shallowly, eyes begging for mercy. Starscream didn't feel hatred, or triumph, or disgust, or any of the various emotions he always thought he would feel if (when) this moment came. He felt nothing. He felt utterly exhausted. He lowered his blaster. "I owe you nothing. Not even death." He turned and began to walk away.

He heard sudden movement behind him, and Megatron's raspy, wordless scream of anger, and he turned around, eyes wide and terrified - too slowly - but before Megatron could fire at him, the great leader of the Decepticons was thrown back to the ground unconscious by a paralytic blast. He looked in the direction of the shot and saw his dear friend with a look of such rage on her face that he couldn't even thank her, for his love for her overwhelmed any chance for speech. She turned her gaze to him, smiling calmly, suddenly all cheerfulness once again, and held up one finger in a gesture to wait, before returning to working on the damaged helm of the red Autobot sitting next to her, who gave Starscream a look of mixed confusion and sympathy (perhaps he was the one who brought her attention to Megatron - Starscream knew that she tended to get quite immersed in her work).

Starscream paused. So, he had no place with the Decepticons anymore. Doubtless Megatron would, once he recovered, take any chance to terminate him once and for all. He was certainly not an Autobot - they would not welcome him anyways, even with their shared enemy, and especially not after he had caused them such injury. He must get a head start, then, hide somewhere that Megatron might not find him.

Starscream fled.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna level with y'all, I wrote this whole thing cause I can't escape my own thoughts what with the social isolation going on round here, so this is a vaguely therapeutic thing I made to help calm myself through the character I most connect with...in other words, Starscream is me, and C.D. (my hashtag original character) is also me, and Megatron is - well, I don't want to think about that person right now, actually.  
> Anyways, hope y'all liked it okay. :)


End file.
